Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 12

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy...our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."

The Dalai Lama

It was no coincidence that the first time I became open to religious experience in my life was when I first fell in love. (The medium of spiritual connection is Love) She was a beautiful Mormon girl who lived about as close as you could in our spread-out canyon community. I became interested in her religion. And while I do believe the true search for religious meaning is a search to find love, to find connectedness, the truth is that I really wanted to impress the girl.

I'm sure that my parents probably intended for me to get the basic values that people often find attending a church, but their limited and unsatisfactory experiences with organized religion apparently didn't inspire them to pass along any kind of spirituality, or even dogma, to their kids. My father had grown up a left-handed Catholic, which is to say persecuted and defiant. He quit the church at his first opportunity. My mother never went to church, and didn't have much to say about religion, except that it was probably a good thing for some people. I recall her suggesting that it may be a good thing for me, but she wasn't sure which church I should go to. She did offer to drive me to which ever one I picked out.

I had my own spiritual inspirations of a sort from the stars and canyons- that sense of a native experience with the land, perhaps my Kickapoo blood arising. My gung fu teacher had shown me a mysterious invisible force called ch'i, and given me some eastern wisdom, some western philosophy. And then way back there had been those strange, other-worldly moments I'd felt in my early childhood accompanying my Czech grandmother to Catholic mass.

In those days, the mass was performed in Latin by elaborately-robed priests who kept their backs turned to you. There was rich, gilded ornamentation lavished in the huge space with it's towering vaulted ceilings, huge oil paintings and tapestries. Smoke clouds of burning incense and eerie chanting. It was almost spooky, and I was (as intended) transported into a strange, foreign dimension. But all the hoopla only led me to believe that religion was something awesome and unattainable, and without any preparation or repetition, the Catholic faith could gain no purchase in my little boy's heart. Even as a small child, I couldn't trust a life-discipline based on guilt and mortification that weren't of my own creation. Besides, something didn't sit right. Why would I pray in a Roman church to the image of a guy being executed by Romans?

...A Vonnegut, circa 1975.

Reading had given me something of a set of beliefs by the time I reached puberty. My library was pilfered from my college-aged brother and sister, and was rich in philosophical prose. From my brother I copped Kafka, Sartre, and Mark Twain. He could keep those Russians, they were just too intimidatingly thick.From my sister I "borrowed" John Steinbeck, whose ghost I would later stalk (from King City to Monterrey); Henry Miller, who wrote about sex! And my teenage literary hero and default guru, Kurt Vonnegut, whose funny and pointedly nonsensical morality plays made perfect sense in my tiny nation of one. God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut. Years later, I'd go to see Vonnegut on stage with Art Buchwald and Lewis Lapham, discussing the betrayals of the second Bush administration. He was beautifully wise and cranky, and full of love. Within just a couple months, both he and Buchwald would shuffle off this mortal coil, and Lapham would retire from the editorship of Harper's, which for me was also akin to a small death in the family.

I mixed all this heady literature up with the latest Marvel Comics, particularly The Mighty Thor, and The Sub Mariner, completely failing to equate the psychic sufferings of the Existentialists with my favorite quasi-mythic comic book idols. Marvel Comics were existential, and I, as a mere visitor to this planet myself, could identify with all those displaced anti-protagonists completely.

Adding to it all at just the right moment, my high school teacher assigned us the option of reading a book called Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl. I read it. All my strident inner-dependence and resistance to embrace an absurd reality whose beauty could only be grasped in brief, unpredictable moments, suddenly dissolved in my young psyche in just such a moment. I was just here. It didn't have to make any sense. I was a visitor whose chief occupation was making the most of a poorly-planned vacation on a beautiful, but messed-up planet. I only had to do. To be. So it goes.

"This world is a bridge. Pass over it, but do not build your dwelling there."

'Isa, (Jesus in Islam), from an inscription at the mosque in Fatepuhr Sikri, India

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The first book–

I survived three very different near death experiences, and I don't recommend it, but I'd like to give you what I've learned about life (and death) the easy way, in my fun (but serious) book, designed to defuse whatever fears you have, and pass along the lessons I learned the hard way, available now at all major book sellers, from Conari Press

Faith - articles and observations of a spiritual and experiential nature.

The Koko Lion - a character of personal or anonymous memoir–stories from The School of Hard and Soft Knocks, and Tales of unavoidable transformation.

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Don't Be Put-off By This (Spiritual), It's Really Fun to Read Reading List

A Course in Miracles

A Joseph Campbell Companion (ed.)

A Practical Guide to Know Yourself -Maharshi

A Return to Love -Williamson

Bases of Yoga -Aurobindo

Being, Consciousness, Bliss -Fitzgerald

Black Elk Speaks

Christ the Yogi -Ravindra

Crest-Jewel of Discrimination -Shankara/Prabhavananda, Isherwood

Ethics of the Sages Pirke Avot -Shapiro

Finding the Hidden Self: The Shiva Sutras -Worthington

Food For the Gods -Berry (ed.)

Gnana Yoga -Vivekananda

Gnosticism -Hoeller

Good Life, Good Death -Gehlek

How to Know God: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali -Isherwood/Prabhavananda

I Am That -Maharaj

Infinite Life – Thurman

Jesus and Yahweh – Bloom

Jung and the Lost Gospels – Hoeller

Misquoting Jesus -Ehrman

Not Always So -Suzuki

Parallel Worlds -Kaku

Power Vs. Force -Hawkins

Quantum Shift in the Global Brain -Laszlo

Real Magic -Dyer

Rebirth and Karma – Aurobindo

Science and the Akashic Field -Laszlo

Suicide and the Soul – Hillman

Teachings of The Buddha -Kornfield (ed.)

The Bhagavad Gita -Easwaran

The Bhagavad Gita – Gandhi

The Book of Secrets -Chopra

The Captain's Verses -Neruda

The Dhammapada -Easwaran

The Divine Matrix -Braden

The Enlightened Mind -Mitchell (ed.)

The Essenes -Manitara

The Essential Mystics -Harvey (ed.)

The Essential Rumi – Barks

The Field -McTaggart

The Future Evolution of Man -Aurobindo

The Game of Life -Shinn

The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead – Hoeller

The Gospel of Thomas -Leloup

The Great Path of Awakening – Kongtrul

The Hermetica -Freke/Gandy

The Hope -Harvey

The Medium, The Mystic, and the Physicist -LeShan

The Original Jesus, Buddhist Christianity -Gruber, Kersten

The Passover Plot -Schonfield

The Power of Myth -Campbell

The Power of Now -Tolle

The Sacred Power of Huna -Morrell

The Secret Teachings of All Ages -Hall

The Soul of Rumi -Barks (trans/ed.)

The Spiritual Roots of Yoga -Ravindra

The Spirituality of Imperfection -Kurtz/Ketcham

The Tao of Physics -Capra

The Tao te Ching -Lao Tzu/Star, Mitchell, Rosenthal

The Three Pillars of Zen -Kapleau

The Undiscovered Self -Jung

The Upanishads -Mascaro (ed.)

The Way to God -Gandhi

Upanishads -Easwaran

When Things Fall Apart -Chodron

Your Sacred Self -Dyer

Zen Mind, Beginner Mind -Suzuki

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